WILLIAMSON MURRAY

Dr. Williamson Murray earned BA, MA, and PhD degrees in history from Yale
University. A former Air Force maintenance officer, Dr. Murray presently teaches
at Ohio State University where he is rapidly acquiring a reputation as one of the
foremost US authorities on the German Luftwaffe. An avid scholar on military
affairs, Dr. Murray has written numerous articles in professional journals on various
facets of military history. Another major research effort, "The Path to Ruin: The
Change in European Balance of Power, 1938-1939," has just been accepted for
publication by the Princeton University Press. Dr. Murray still retains his
commission in the USAF Ready Reserve, serving as a major in the Air Force
Intelligence Service.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In a work of this nature, it is not surprising that many people played a
considerable role in advising me as I began and conducted my research. The
strengths of this book reflect their help; its weaknesses, my failings. In particular, I
would like to thank Professor Philip Flammer of Brigham Young University who
introduced me to the Air War College and played a major role in developing my
interest in doing a study of the Luftwaffe.

At the Air University, Colonel Thomas Fabyanic, founder of the Airpower
Research Institute (ARI), deserves special mention for his generous support of this
project as does the current Director of the Institute, Colonel Kenneth Alnwick.
Without the wholehearted support of Major General David Gray, former
Commandant of the Air War College, this study could not have been conducted. I
would also like to thank the following individuals at the Air War College for their
help and guidance: Colonel Donald Frizzell, Lieutenant Colonels Donald Baucom,
David MacIssac, David Lupton, and James True; and my colleagues in the ARI, Dr.
David Mets and Dr. Kenneth Werrell. My special thanks to John Schenk and
Dorothy McCluskie of the ARI for their thorough and detailed editorial assistance. I
would also be remiss if I were not to express my thanks to those who helped with the
typing of this manuscript and with arrangements for my travels: especially Edna
Davis, Jo Ann Perdue, Mary Schenk, Betty Brown, and Norma Todd. I must thank
Rose McCall for the excellent graphics and Steve Garst, Air University Review, for
designing the cover. In the academic world, my colleagues Professors I. B. Holley
and Hans Gatzke deserve thanks for their help and advice. At the Ohio State
University, Kenneth Watman and Bruce Nardulli were especially helpful in
reviewing the content of the final manuscript. I should also like to thank Harry
Fletcher for his considerable help in guiding me through the archives at the Albert
F. Simpson Historical Research Center. In addition, I received substantial
assistance while working abroad in European archives. In Great Britain, Group
Captain "Tony" Mason afforded me access to critical materials in the RAF Staff
College archives; "J. P." McDonald guided me through the materials available in
the Public Record Office (PRO) from his post in the Air Historical Branch; and
"Freddie" Lambert and Suzanne Marsh provided invaluable research assistance. I
must also thank Professors Paul Kennedy, John Gooch, Brian Bond, and Richard
Overy for their help as well as friendship that they extended to me while I was in
Great Britain. Dr. Noble Frankland provided his time and his vast knowledge at the
Imperial War Museum. I also must thank the staffs at the PRO, the Imperial War
Museum, and the RAF Staff College.

In Germany, the staffs at the military archives in Freiburg and the
Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt played an invaluable role in furthering my
work. In particular, I must thank Dr. Manfred Messerschmidt, Dr. Jürgen Förster,
Dr. Horst Boog, and especially Dr. Wilhelm Deist and Oberstleutnant Klaus Maier
for their help and friendship. Major General Hans W. Asmus provided enormous
patience, wisdom, as well as great courtesy and hospitality during my stay in
Germany. I should also like to thank Oberst Werner Geissinger for his considerable
help in proofreading the German as well as the English in the various drafts of this
work. In the military archives in Freiburg, Frau Eleonore Miiller was most helpful,
always friendly, and invariably pleasant.
Finally, I must thank my wife Marjorie and my children, Alexandra and Spencer,
for their support and love in all the separations that this project entailed.

FOREWORD

Military history is a window through which we may study the lessons of past
combat. These lessons become clear only after thoughtful examination of events
and factors that influenced them. Organizations that have not been willing to
examine the past, especially their own, have usually paid a price for that oversight.

We stand today on the far side of a gulf of time which separates us from the
experiences of the Second World War. Nearly forty years ago, the Allied Air Forces
fought an extensive, costly battle for air superiority over the European continent.
The air war over Europe represented a great struggle between fully mobilized
industrial powers. This conflict had the scale, characteristics, and balance of
strength between both sides which we might well experience in a future conflict.
Though over time we were able to bring our massive productive superiority to bear
in this war, it nevertheless was a struggle which challenged our staying power and
stamina. The length and attrition of that conflict suggest that should we ever face
another war on a similar scale, the clash of power may neither be short nor quickly
decisive. We may again have to face a battlefield environment and set of challenges
which are wholly different from what we have faced in recent conflicts.

Only a few of our senior officers can call directly upon the experience of World
War II to guide them in leading the Air Force. Our combat experience base is
limited mainly to the events of Korea and Vietnam. Should we have to fight a large
scale war again, only history can provide the necessary insights. If history has had
one direct lesson for the student of war, it is that nations and their armed forces will
not be fully prepared for the war that comes. If this is so, we must acquire by an
extensive study of past conflicts, a flexibility of mind and intellectual rigor that will
permit us to deal with the unexpected and adapt to changing conditions as they are,
not as we forecast them to be. History clearly points out that those who ignore the
past are doomed to repeat old mistakes.

This book is a comprehensive analysis of an air force, the Luftwaffe, in World
War II. It follows the Germans from their prewar preparations to their final defeat.
There are many disturbing parallels with our current situation. I urge every student
of military science to read it carefully. The lessons of the nature of warfare and the
application of airpower can provide the guidance to develop our fighting forces and
employment concepts to meet the significant challenges we are certain to face in the
future.

ROBERT C. MATHIS
General, USAF (Retired)

INTRODUCTION

As with all military thought, a wide variety of political, historical, and economic
factors guided the development of air doctrines in the period between the First and
Second World Wars. Yet standing above all other influences was a revulsion
against the mud and despair of the trenches. Thus, it is not surprising that an Italian
senior officer, Giulio Douhet, would argue that airpower could prevent the
repetition of a war that had cost Italy more than 400,000 dead. In terms of the first
formulations of air doctrine, Douhet's thought did not prove particularly influential.
In Britain, the development of doctrine, both within and outside of the Royal Air
Force (RAF), already was well advanced by the end of the First World War.1
Douhet may have exercised more influence on American doctrine, since various
translated extracts of his work found their way into the library and schools of the
American Air Service as early as 1922.2
But the formulation of a precision bombing
doctrine in the United States raises the question of how deeply his writings
influenced early Army Air Corps pioneers.

Yet, Douhet's theories are symptomatic of intellectual attitudes current among
military and civilian thinkers in the post-World War I era. They are, therefore, a
useful point of departure. Douhet's central, single-minded argument was that the
decisive mission for an air force was "strategic" bombing.3
All other missions
would only detract from this role and thus were considered counterproductive and a
misuse of air resources. Douhet excluded the possibility of air defense, denied
fighter aircraft a place in future air forces, and argued that close air support and
interdiction were an irrelevant waste of aircraft. The only role for the air force of the
future would be that of "strategic" bombing. Douhet further reasoned that the
more heavily armed bomber would always prove superior to the fighter in air-to-air
combat.4
Underlying Douhet's arguments was a belief that bombardment of an
enemy's population centers would shatter his morale and lead directly to the
collapse of his war effort.5
Such an attitude underlay most airpower theories
between the wars and reflected a fundamental disbelief in the staying power of
civilian societies.

Douhet's approach represented the hope that airpower and "strategic" bombing
would enable international conflict to return to an era of short, decisive wars and
thus would allow Europe to escape the mass slaughter of the last war. However,
nowhere in Douhet's writings is there a sense of the technological and industrial
underpinnings necessary for air war. This may subconsciously reflect the
circumstance that Italy possessed none of the resources, expertise, or industrial
requirements for such a war. It is worth noting, however, that most other theorists
of the period were similarly reluctant to recognize the technological and industrial
complexities of their subject. In retrospect, what makes the present-day
conventional wisdom that Douhet was the prophet of airpower so surprising is the
fact that his theory denigrated all the major missions of modern air forces except
"strategic" bombing. Douhet dismissed air defense, tactical air, airlift,
reconnaissance, and air superiority as immaterial. Not surprisingly, he also argued
that airpower eliminated the requirement for armies and navies; consequently, there
was no need for interservice cooperation.

The theories of Douhet and other early airpower advocates, with their stress on
the notion that "strategic" bombing was the exclusive air mission, have exercised a
great influence on the development of air forces since that time. Commentators on
airpower have all too often tied their subject directly and exclusively to "strategic"
bombing, while ignoring other possible applications. Air forces, however, have
had to perform a wide variety of tasks other than "strategic" bombing. The real
contribution of airpower to final victory in the Second World War lay in the very
diversity of its capability. Ironically, the conduct of air operations in that war
resembled, in many facets, the strategy of the previous conflict except that attrition
came now in terms of aircraft and aircrews rather than mud-stained infantry. Month
after month, year after year, crews climbed into their aircraft to fly over the
European continent. Those in charge of the air battle came to measure success by
drops in percentage points of bomber and fighter losses rather than in terms of yards
gained. As one commentator has pointed out:

Despite the visions of its protagonists of prewar days, the air war
during the Second World War . . . was attrition war. It did not
supplant the operations of conventional forces; it complemented
them. Victory went to the air forces with the greatest depth, the
greatest balance, the greatest flexibility in employment. The result
was an air strategy completely unforeseen by air commanders . . .6

Thus, air war proved to have none of the decisive elements that prewar thinkers and
advocates had so confidently predicted. Rather, air superiority and the utilization of
airpower to break the opponent proved to be elusive and intractable problems.
Enemy air forces could and did live to fight another day despite setbacks and defeat.
Only the elimination of their supporting industries and resources, or the occupation
of their bases by ground forces, guaranteed complete victory. The accomplishment
of the former task proved extraordinarily difficult, while the latter indicated a
degree of interdependence among air, ground, and naval forces that airpower
advocates had so casually dismissed before the war. If the aircraft had added a new
dimension to warfare, it had not changed the underlying principles.

While the concept of "strategic" bombing intrigued prewar air forces, practical
factors--the "real world" of interservice relationships, defense priorities, political
attitudes, and economic limitations--exercised an important influence over their
establishment and development. Entirely different strategic factors determined
control over the constitution and strategies of each different European air force, not
to mention the Army Air Corps in the United States. To understand the course of
those developments as well as the doctrine that guided the employment of airpower
in the Second World War, one must grasp not only those factors influencing the air
forces themselves but also the larger problems of national policy and strategy that
influenced both politicians and the military.

The Luftwaffe, as with all military organizations, was a child of its time. The
theories current throughout Europe in the 1920's and 1930's with respect to the
future course of warfare in general and air war in particular also were present in
Germany. Conversely, and not surprisingly, the peculiar forces that had guided and
molded German history exercised their influence on the growth and development of
the Luftwaffe. Like their counterparts in other nations, German airmen believed that
their air force would be able to exercise an important, if not decisive, impact on a
future war. To them, aircraft would be the definitive "strategic" weapon in the
coming conflict.7
Those currents within the German military, typified by Erich
Ludendorff's conceptions of total war and the mobilization of the population, not
only made the mass movement of the Nazi Party attractive to many officers but also
led to a greater acceptance of airpower theories among the air force officer corps.8
On the other hand, Germany's location and strategic situation presented the German
military with a reality that they could not ignore; one major defeat on land might
well seal the fate of the Reich before the Luftwaffe could have an impact. That
represented a strategic situation quite different from that facing British and
American airmen.

Besides reflecting its society, the Luftwaffe reflected the traditions and values of
the Prussian officer corps. Like their brother officers in the army, Luftwaffe officers
would prove imaginative, innovative, and highly competent in operational and
tactical matters. They would, however, prove themselves lost in the higher realms
of strategy and grand strategy, and it would be in those realms that the Reich would
founder. After the war, the German generals and admirals would rush into print to
prove that defeat had been largely the result of Hitler's leadership. In fact, their
strategic concepts in the war proved to be as flawed as had the Führer's. The
German generals and admirals aided and abetted Hitler's strategy in 1940; and when
it succeeded beyond their wildest expectations with the fall of France, they reacted
in awe, suspending reason for a blind faith in the invincibility of the Reich and its
Führer. The strategic advice they tendered from that point forward ignored the
industrial, economic, and political realities of war between industrialized nations
that have existed since the American Civil War. The failure of German grand
strategy and mobilization in 1940-41 insured not only the defeat of the German
armed forces and the Luftwaffe in the coming years but a catastrophe for the German
nation as well. Therefore, exploring the causes for the defeat of the Luftwaffe, the
focus of this study, explains more than the downfall of an air force.

Notes

1. For a detailed discussion of this point, see the excellent work by Barry D. Powers, Strategy Without
Slide-Rule, British Air Strategy, 1914-1939 (London, 1976).

2. Robert F. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine: A History of Basic Thinking in the United States Air
Force, 1907-1964 (Montgomery, 1971), pp. 38-39.

3. For the purposes of this study, the use of the term "strategic" bombing will have the word strategic
inclosed within quotation marks, as this author believes that the use of the word strategic by airpower
enthusiasts to connote a particular form of bombing distorts the classical meaning of the word. The
difficulty into which the misuse of this word has led historians might be best characterized by the
following question: In May 1940, given Germany's military situation, what was the best strategic use to
which the Luftwaffe could be put: supporting the army's drive to the channel and the crushing of French
and British land power, or attacking French factories and cities? The answer is clear in a classical sense.
Within the existing definitions of "strategic" and "tactical" bombing, it is not so clear.

7. For the basic groundbreaking work on this point, I am indebted to a lecture given in September 1980
at the Air War College, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, by Oberstleutnant Klaus Maier of the
Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, Federal Republic of Germany. See the further discussion and
amplification of this point in Chapter I and in my article, "The Luftwaffe Before the Second World War:
A Mission, A Strategy?," Journal of Strategic Studies (September 1981).

8. See, in particular, the articles dealing with airpower that appeared in the Militärwissenschaftliche
Rundschau from 1936 through 1939.